


Trick House

by macabre



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: F/F, F/M, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-08 22:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre/pseuds/macabre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven forges herself a new identity and a new home. Post Cuba.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trick House

Raven settles into many roles in the Brotherhood; she affectionately becomes Erik’s right-hand woman, somewhat to Emma’s chagrin, who fades into the background more and more, but not entirely by anyone’s design but her own, while Raven does many a task for him, including running intel, smoothing over relations within their company that Erik does not feel necessary to do himself, and yes, occasionally warming his bed, but it’s something that she chooses to do, wants to do, and being free from under Charles’ careful watch for the first time since childhood does not temper her careless emotionally spending. 

There’s Azazel too, who is more fond of Raven than Raven is of him, but he’s sweeter than their language barrier often allows them, and his crude jokes always make her laugh no matter how dire the situation. More that that, she likes the way their skin looks side by side, his red and smooth, hers blue and raised. He spends many nights watching her, and eventually, she gives him what he wants, but it doesn’t last long, and Erik either doesn’t know or doesn’t care to know. After the first six months, sleeping with Erik wanes almost to never, and she wonders if she was just a replacement for Charles all this time. 

They use each other, there is no doubt about it, but she doesn’t mind, because she’s free to do as she wishes, and see who she sees, in whatever form she cares to take. Only once does she argue with Erik so badly that she decides to hurt him in the worst way – by taking her brother’s form in his wheelchair, something Erik has never seen for himself and doesn’t wish to. This is the first and last time Erik ever raises a hand against her. Raven wants to be enraged by it, but she isn’t. She knows this time she brought it on herself; she could see the outcome in her mind even before she took the shape of her brother just as clear as any clairvoyant. 

They keep a more professional relationship after this; she still is his most trusted friend, but they do not speak of Charles ever again and Raven stops coming to him by certain hours of the night, even if there is business still needed to be discussed. Her time with Azazel likewise deceases, and eventually stops because of his other red side: his jealousy. He doesn’t particularly care for Erik after Shaw’s rule; much like Emma, he preferred Shaw’s easygoing timeline and their ability to hide from any real trouble. Erik is more reckless in that he doesn’t care to hide anymore, not since Cuba and the exposure of mutants to all world powers. It’s public knowledge now, and the news programs are filled with it and the varying theories behind their genetics. 

Not once does Charles make an appearance. Not yet, Raven thinks. He will when the time comes when they need him most; she’s sure of it.

Still, it is over Azazel’s demand that she stop sleeping with Erik that she stops sleeping with him. He can’t command her anything; she’ll follow certain orders, but only from Erik, who has not only her own wellbeing in mind, but her kind’s, and it has nothing to do with what happens between her legs. Erik never even had a romantic interest in her, and it is Azazel’s folly to believe so.

He leaves by himself without any prompting or even suspicions; Janos follows. They’ve acquired other mutants to their cause, but their absence is missed for some time after they leave. Raven certainly misses instantaneous traveling. Now when Erik asks her to travel incognito for a mission, she must slip onto busses or trains like everyone else, feeling as ordinary as the others onboard.

She’s dreading a particular trip when she glances over at Angel in their warehouse, the mutant’s wings spread high and wide like a badge of honor she constantly wears. The other girl has settled into her own role, but unlike Raven, it seems to be more peripheral, and she listens more than is heard, unlike the brief time Raven knew her before the brotherhood. Their Angel seems more tamed than those early days, and maybe it’s only in the absence of strip clubs that it’s appeared, but Raven wonders how happy she is, or if she’ll stay. The Brotherhood right now functions just as much as a stopping ground for mutants than as an actual organized movement. A safe haven.

“Angel,” she asks, gently touching the other girl’s bare shoulder; the other mutant still prefers wearing thin, backless dresses for her wings. “Fancy a trip with me?”

The girl looks up at her and grins, a mischievous look. The first in a long time. “I don’t know; can you handle heights?”

Traveling with Angel is different than Azazel of course; it’s more functionary. They’re properly flying, like humans can do, but without the plane, and it’s a much closer thing, both physically between their clasped bodies, and mentally, that fear of falling because she’s got nothing but skin to hold onto. It’s only a short trip in Angel’s arms – Angel has been training in carrying other team members sustained distances, but it’s still tiring for her. They fly until they can’t, but by then they’re close enough to take a quick car ride into the city and disperse as Raven needs to quickly take care of business.

Angel waits for her. Raven half expected her to fly off in the night, because now that she’s left her childhood behind, it feels like everything and everyone is still leaving. This girl looks strange to her now, with a jacket pulled on over the wings, and she supposes that Angel’s giving her that same look because she’s grown used to her blue skin, maybe doesn’t even recognize her blonde form any longer.

“Do you prefer me like this?” 

Angel smiles. “Baby, I’d take you any way.” Raven then shifts through several different forms behind the safety of a locked door, and with Angel’s laughter ringing in her ears, she thinks she can retain this, just one simple friendship. 

It doesn’t end up so simple: Raven’s instincts about Angel prove correct, and in the next days that pass, she watches carefully. Angel takes care of herself, but she’s also someone born to run. She doesn’t explicitly trust anyone in their factions – she’s dependable on missions, but she doesn’t engage much with others outside of them. Raven knows it’s only a matter of time. 

She tries taking Erik’s form to weasel her way into a serious discussion about Angel’s place in their group, but it doesn’t take. Angel takes one look at her in Erik’s skin and grins when Raven opens her mouth to impersonate their leader.

“Baby, you’ve got to try harder than that.” She laughs. “I’ve known Erik almost as long as you have.”

Taking her natural form, Raven sits next to her. “I’m serious. I want to know how long you plan on staying.”

“Going to miss me?” She’s teasing, still smiling, raising an eyebrow. 

“Yes.” It’s an earnest answer. Azazel and Janos are gone. Soon, it’ll just be her and Erik left. Angel is that last part of her old life, combined with the new one she’s choosing to make. She’s a piece Raven would keep planted at her side if she could, but she’s got the foresight to know that the harder you hold onto someone like Angel, the harder they fight to get away. 

Angel shrugs. “I’m staying for now.” She looks away from Raven, who shifts into the other girl’s form right next to her. 

“When did you grow your wings?” Raven holds them away from her body, turning her head to look back at them. Moving them is stiff, like moving an extra limb. Unnatural and uncomfortable, much like being blue all of her life. 

“I was ten when my back started itching all the time. Then came intense back pain like you wouldn’t believe. It got so bad I stopped going to school. Then, one day when I was eleven and just sitting at my kitchen table with my Mama, I itched so hard at my skin that I felt something come off, but not the dead skin like before.” 

She curls her wings around her arms, something Raven rarely sees. They’re more flexible than she imagined, and now Angel wears them like a cape. It’s a self-conscious maneuver, she realizes. “Anyway, one of my wings had popped out like a extra bone or something. My Mama almost fainted. She screamed and cried and didn’t know what to do.”

“So you left.” Raven guesses. It’s what she would have done – what she did when her skin became blue enough that she couldn’t fit in anymore. The streets are what urged her ability to manifest itself; only then did she learn to temper the blue back into a pale skin. She eventually took the appearance of her blonde form and tried to convince herself that the blue skin was all a dream until she woke up every morning with the same skin, unable to maintain it in her sleep. 

“Had to. I don’t know what she was planning to do, but I know it wouldn’t have been helpful or beneficial to my wellbeing.” She lets her wings fall back and as she rolls her shoulders, they quiver. The tips brush Raven’s side, and she lets herself shift back. She wants to feel them on her own skin. 

“Anyway, the other wing popped as I was packing a bag. By the time I made it out onto the fire escape, I felt the perverse need to jump.” She grins again.

“Did you?”

“Hell no.” She laughs. “Well, I like to think I jumped down the last flight of stairs and glided a bit, but flying came later.”

“And your spitballs?” Raven is teasing her now, glad they can still have this, this lightness between them. 

“Aw honey, you don’t want to know.” Shaking her head, she sighs. “Worlds of trouble is what I was in for a long time, but…” She looks over at Raven, her eyes looking up and down her body once in a less than subtle maneuver. 

It’s Raven’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “But?”

“But things work out, don’t they?”

They watch each other for a long pause before Raven takes her hand. “I’m glad you’re here now. And I wish you’d stay.”

“But you know I’m not.”

Raven tucks a piece of the other girl’s hair behind her ear. She rests her hand on her bare shoulder once more. “Maybe not forever, but you’ll stay tonight.”

Raven takes Angel to bed that night because she wants to, and because she wants Angel to stay, even if she knows she won’t. It’s just them in the dark, and their skin blends into the night except for Angel’s wings that reflect the tiniest glint of light. As she lies on top of Raven, she folds them smoothly against her back so that the mutant below her can run her hands over them. 

“I was just as alone as you were, you know.”

“I know.” She kisses her collarbone. “But you found the Professor.”

“He saved me.” Raven never denied this, but she didn’t stay for him. “But my place is here. I’m going to help create a place for all mutant kind, so that other little girls won’t have to be lost.”

The girl on top of her laughs, and Raven feels it all down her body. Her wings twitch whenever she has moments of laughter or happiness; it is completely endearing. 

Raven wonders what they look like when Angel is sad. 

These intimate moments with this mutant will make it harder for her to say goodbye, Raven suddenly thinks. She’d rather not see the way Angel can almost disappear in the night-filled room or the different ways her wings move, a telltale sign of what she’s feeling. Angel doesn’t curl her toes or yell when she comes – her wings just flutter so fast they’re invisible for a moment. 

Angel was never invisible to Raven. 

In the morning, they sleep through a meeting they’re supposed to be sitting in, especially Raven, but she can’t care right now. Angel looks as spectacular in the morning light as she does in the night. She studies her wings closer than ever before and wonders if she duplicated them to even their half intricacy.

“You’re stunning.”

Rolling her eyes, Angel flops over onto her back, the wings automatically folding into her skin. It seems to be the only time they stay like that now. “And you’re a sap.”

“I’m serious.” It isn’t Azazel’s alluring skin or Erik’s powerful presence, but it’s something else entirely – something Raven is about to drown in, if she lets herself. 

“Let it go, baby.” Angel stands, pulling on her dress and letting her wings down. It’s as if she can read Raven’s mind, a paranoia she’s had to deal with all these years. Now, she doesn’t care as much. Not when it’s forged from a connection. A glance and an intuition. 

“You could stay with me.” Raven lies in their sheets still. She watches for any sign of weakness. 

“It’d be as good as any reason to stay.” 

“For love?” This is someone Raven could love, if she was allowed. 

“For you, yes.”

 

 

By the time Raven makes it to the warehouse, the meeting is over. Erik waits for her, standing by the industrial floor-to-ceiling windows. He doesn’t turn around when she stomps in loudly. 

“Long night?” He asks, although he sounds hardly interested. She’s about to make an indignant reply because she’s got a reputation to defend, but then she soberly thinks that he won’t be interested when Angel is gone either. 

“What’d I miss?” 

“Nothing. You and I are leaving.”

Raven freezes where she is, her hair stuck halfway between red and blonde from where she’d been running her hands through it to comb out the tangles. “Leaving for where?”

“We’re headed west; we’re too close to other influences here.” Influences meaning Charles, no doubt. “We’ve set up a team here. Now it’s time for you and I to expand elsewhere.”

Raven wants to protest at first, but stops herself. There is no one here she will miss – well, no one she hasn’t already said goodbye to. So instead, she says: “Okay.”

They depart just hours later without fanfare. A lot of the mutants could care less about their departure, and others, like Emma who is now technically in charge, are downright gleeful. Angel isn’t among those present as they walk out the door, but Raven likes to imagine that if she were brave enough she would have stopped at the building across the street where she was staying and knock on the door. Raven would flicker between her blue form and her blonde form, and Angel would roll her eyes and kiss her lightly before letting her in. She’d listen to Angel discuss her plans of moving on, and this time, Raven would say, “Alright.”

Instead, Raven leaves, no warning, and there are only dirty sheets left behind. She’ll only ever imagine what the mutant’s wings look like in the moment of loss, and Raven hates herself because she knows she’s not the first person to have left her like that. Nor will she be the last.


End file.
